Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday November 16, 2012 @11:13AM
from the write-a-letter-to-your-representative-but-don't-mail-it dept.

New submitter Gaildew2 writes with news that the embattled United States Postal Service has posted a $15.9 billion loss over the past fiscal year, more than three times the amount it lost the previous year.
"The USPS, which relies on the sale of stamps and other products rather than taxpayer dollars, has been grappling for years with high costs and tumbling mail volumes as consumers communicate more online. In September, the Postal Service hit its $15 billion borrowing limit for the first time in its history. That leaves it with few options if it suffers an unexpected shock, such as a slowdown if lawmakers are unable to prevent the year-end tax increases and spending cuts known as the 'fiscal cliff.' ... Postal officials want Congress to pass legislation that would allow the agency to end Saturday mail delivery and run its own health plan rather than enrolling USPS employees in federal health programs, among other things."

The only people using mail anymore are junk mailers. And they get an ENORMOUS discount to send out thousands of flyers and coupons. So let's raise our taxes even more to prop up a bunch of spammers. If you don't, the union gets angry and leans on politicians. That's just good policy.

Well, I still receive packages and my bills via the USPS, so I imagine shutting it down would cause some problems in those departments.

And they get an ENORMOUS discount to send out thousands of flyers and coupons

Mailing companies don't get enormous discounts. They actually do the majority of the USPS's work themselves. They take care of the presorting and processing of all the mail, and will even do drop shipments of the presorted mail to the delivery facilities directly. The only real part that the USPS does is take the sorted mail and have their carriers deliver it. It removes a large portion of the process, such as address analysis and routing processing. USPS also get revenue from the mandatory quarterly software updates used for sorting and processing of the mail.

The USPS doesn't run on taxes, they are self-sufficient. That's why they're not asking for a bailout, but for an end to Saturday mail delivery and other USPS cost saving measures. At the same time, the USPS is generally hobbled by Congressional requirements that they do this or that and overfund their retirement obligations and all sorts of other things.

THIS is important. Basically, Congress is making the USPS prepay pensions so many years out, that the beneficiaries of it haven't even started working for the USPS yet!

Of course they're doing badly, no other company on earth is required by government to do that. Combine that with they're required to maintain postage rates which are under cost for the library system despite big, heavy books, and that it's legal for UPS and FedEx to use USPS for last-leg delivery*, congress has been working very hard to set up the USPS to fail.

It was basically a trick to make USPS be the poster boy for government inefficiency: they get to make headlines every quarter about their financial woes.

* UPS Mail Innovations, FedEx Smart Post, and some other services are products those companies sell which provide cheap shipping. Delivery is expensive, and these low-price options are offered at a cheap price because they remove the last leg of delivery, actually delivering to unique addresses. They handle most of the shipping themselves hitchhiking on other shipping methods when they have extra room and, when they get to the depot, just get offloaded to the local USPS hub and pay them a fraction of what they get paid to finish the delivery. This is the perfect textbook example of "Socialize the Costs, Privatize the Profits".

Honestly it works both ways. USPS pays FedEx and UPS a small portion of what it gets to ship a letter to have them move the mail in bulk across the US, since it's cheaper to utilize their air and ground freight systems instead of building its own duplicate system. If the USPS wasn't hobbled with things like the pension pre-pay and the inability to control it's prices, everyone would be making profit.

The USPS doesn't run on taxes, they are self-sufficient. That's why they're not asking for a bailout, but for an end to Saturday mail delivery and other USPS cost saving measures. At the same time, the USPS is generally hobbled by Congressional requirements that they do this or that and overfund their retirement obligations and all sorts of other things.

Exactly. They are the only agency required to pre-pay all the retirement accounts in full rather than make regular installments into an interest-bearing account. Congress hobbled them with this, along with requirements to keep all rural post offices open and keep delivering on Saturdays, but provided them no way to recoup those costs. Almost all of the $15B is due to the retirement pre-payment requirements.

Most people still get at least some of their bills on paper. Having only one delivery a week would definitely cause some billing problems for customers, besides the fact that carrier routes would have to be redone to account for the volume-- because now he has a week's worth of mail. Know what your mailbox looks like if you go away for a week and place a hold on it? Yeah, it's going to be like that every week. And people's mailboxes, especially in apartments, are not going to be able to hold that stuff. Losing Saturday delivery is reasonable; going to weekly delivery is not.

Everybody assumes because they don't get much important mail that nobody else must get important mail, either - that's why you see comments like this about "nobody needing mail service more than once a week." But surely a middle ground exists between "once a week" and "every day" that would also allow the USPS to save a little money?

Given the increasingly electronic nature of things like this, I think the USPS could probably explore:1) Any address gets service 3 days a week; each carrier could service 2 different routes in a week, on alternating days (e.g., Mon/Wed/Fri, or Tues/Thurs/Sat):
-- If you absolutely MUST receive something on a non-delivery day, pick it up at the post office, or just... wait until tomorrow. Very few things sent by post are *that* urgent that you couldn't wait one extra day for regular service to deliver it;
-- Cut the number of carriers in half - since you only do half the existing routes on any given day, you don't need as many carriers;
-- For absolutely time-critical shipping, subcontract with a service like FedEx or UPS to handle the local delivery of specific packages on non-delivery days;2) Offer a "pro" plan to opt out of the advertising (just like you can do with apps and online services)... I would pay a reasonable amount of money to have my mail service (and my mailbox) not cluttered up by a bunch of useless crap advertising that I never look at. I understand that the ads help subsidize the low cost of mail, so I would be willing to help offset that lost revenue, if they offered a service that would exempt my mailbox from the advertising b.s. and save a tree or ten... I suspect they could find a few other people who would be willing to pay this, as well.

As people are increasingly connected and things move increasingly to being done online/electronically, I think the migration to once a week service (or even longer intervals) is pretty inevitable. But it need not be "daily delivery today, monthly delivery tomorrow," either - it can be phased in over many years as / if demand tapers so that people and companies have a chance to adjust.

At the same time, the USPS is generally hobbled by Congressional requirements that they do this or that and overfund their retirement obligations and all sorts of other things.

This. Pundits love to ignore the fact that the same Congressional tools that whine about USPS' inefficiency are typically the ones preventing USPS from enacting changes that would help its bottom line and potentially save it from needing massive loans.

And you'd be wrong. It's not only legally required to operate without receiving tax funds, it's by law not allowed to raise the price of stamps, or determine its own service hours, and it has incredibly onerous restrictions placed on it to fund its retirement and medical benefits for decades more than any private corporation would ever consider doing. In other words, Republicans set it up to fail so they could point to it as an example of inefficient government.

In other words, Republicans set it up to fail so they could point to it as an example of inefficient government.

Interestingly, the Labour party in the UK did exactly the same thing in order to justify privatisations.

The post office is obliged to let other companies collect mail and sell stamps. This means all the easy collections like collecting a huge number of mail sacks from one location are taken care of by private companies. The lucrative part (selling stamps) is also taken care of by private companies.

The difficult part (last mile delivery to every unique address in the UK) is taken care of the Royal Mail. Oh and they get to charge the colelction companies a very small amount set by the government for this last mile delivery.

It's basically a cunning scheme to funnel tax money into cronies pockets while giving the appearance that privatisation is good because all the private mail compaines are profitable and the only non private one hemorages money and has to be propped up by the taxpayer.

It is a fine example of the government being extremely crap. Except that the part of the government in question is Parliament, not the Royal Mail.

Of course I blame one party: It was the Republicans who were in the majority in both houses of Congress when they passed the laws that crippled the financial position of the USPS. It was the Republicans who voted for the law, while most Democrats opposed it. Who else should I blame?

Does saying "it's all grey" make it easier for you to ignore people who are fucking over other people?

"The USPS has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters. Since the 2006 all-time peak mail volume,[5] after which Congress passed the "Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act",[6] (which mandated $5.5 billion per year to be paid into an account to pre-fund retiree health-care, 75 years into the future—a requirement unique to this agency), revenue dropped sharply due to recession-influenced[7] declining mail volume,[8] prompting the postal service to look to other sources of revenue while cutting costs to reduce its budget deficit.[9]"

I’m sure that like most of us in the country the USPS also benefits from using roads and sidewalks and highways and water and electricity systems that were built for us by all those socialists between the 1930s and 1980, back when the personal tax rates were three times higher. (No doubt you have built your own alternative transportation system, perhaps jetpack-based.)

Is there any reason for the government to run the post office.? (Yes. The constitution provides for it.)

Why are you so invested in having the government run the post office? What makes you think that big top-down government agencies are the way to go?

If the USPS is self-sufficient why MUST it be a government service? Do you actually think that government agencies are better?

Here's your answer:

The mission of the Postal Service is to provide the American public with trusted universal postal service at affordable prices. While not explicitly defined, the Postal Service's universal service obligation (USO) is broadly outlined in statute and includes multiple dimensions: geographic scope, range of products, access to services and facilities, delivery frequency, affordable and uniform pricing, service quality, and security of the mail. While other carriers may claim to voluntarily provide delivery on a broad basis, the Postal Service is the only carrier with a legal obligation to provide all the various aspects of universal service at affordable rates.

So, if we don't think we need a post office, let's change the constitution.

Personally, I think there some services best provided by the government, including services where it might be desirable to provide a certain level of service at a certain price to everyone in the country. Maybe you disagree. That is your right. So change it. Get your congresscritters to amend the Constitution.

Again, just my opinion, but to some extent our national character is defined by the obligations that unite us. The interstate system, CDC, USPS, NASA, the US military, Sesame Street. Things that exist only in America. Get rid of enough of those obligations, and we're no longer the United States, we're just some states.

If they were run as a normal company, they would not want to run rural routes because they're not cost-effective. Fedex does not deliver to rural Alaska. USPS does.

Government agencies are better when (a) the service being provided falls into the category of "natural monopoly", and (b) when coverage is required to be universal. Especially (b) because as long as you have to serve everyone, you should probably be accountable to everyone. That whole "by the people, for the people" thing, as opposed to "by the employees, for the shareholders" thing.

I'm not a big fan of having a universal tax for the benefit of the shareholders of some company.

You can disagree with the necessity of having a good postal system, but (a) as you mention, the Founders did not, and (b) I'd suggest you try living in someplace that does not have a well-run postal system.

I've lived in rural Alaska. It's a lot like frontier America in 1776: the USPS was often the only way to get things. I've also lived in rural Costa Rica, and the inability to get anything by mail was a sharp and unpleasant contrast.

Honestly, I see the USPS as being an excellent example of how government services should be run, although I would rather they be subsidized a bit more heavily. Service charges should be designed to prevent (or recoup the costs from) overuse; the majority of operating funds should come from taxation. Charges on services with a universal mandate are a form of hidden taxation: I'd rather be up-front about it. The idea of government agencies being run as for-profit businesses is actually a severe misunderstanding of what government is for.

Well, no. One problem we have as techies is we tend to surround ourselves with similar people and forget that not everyone is online. All YOU might get is junk mail, but many people (usually at the low end of the income scale) still depend on USPS for the basic bureaucracy of living. Many people still, for instance, pay their bills by mailing a check. They do not have computers or Internet so the electronic option simply isn't open to them.

Actually it's the rare but important stuff sent via the mail that you need to subsidize and why there are massive government postal programmes at all. If you can't check your bank balance online, if you need to send legal documents, contracts, bill etc. all of that needs to be accessible to people. Your voter registration any government correspondence etc. is all doable through mail. And mail services guarantee package delivery to the entire country usually (I'm not 100% sure how this works for the US with things like the republic of marshall islands or the like, which are sort of overseas independent dependencies of the US government, but not full blow territories like puerto rico).

All of the junk mail crap is there to subsidize the actually important stuff. The effective monopoly postal services had on junk mail was an indirect subsidy, and I can't imagine Fed Ex wanting to go door to door delivering pizza coupons, but who knows. Even things like magazines, which, yes, people actually buy and read, would be seriously inhibited if they had to pay significantly more for delivery costs.

Obviously, the basic problem all postal services have is their regulatory requirements don't line up with their financial ones in a changing market. Government needs to take a bit of a heavy hand in any industry where the goal is to actually reduce your workload. Medical providers should be looking for ways to reduce their number of people getting sick, police should be looking to reduce the amount of crime, the post office should be looking for ways to reduce paper mail, but at the same time you do need reliable cross country (cross world actually) mail delivery - because some of what is sent via mail is both important and needs to be kept inexpensive. If you want to spend 8 bucks to mail a letter to arrive tomorrow rather than 50 cents for it to arrive in 3 days fine, but for the people who cannot afford the extra 7.50 or whatever it is you don't want to lock them out of communication, most especially if they are your customers.

As to the specific problem though, of mail employees being necessarily treated like career people and not minimum wage disposables, and all of that stuff, I don't really know. If the government is going to mandate they provide a service without a way to pay for it (e.g. saturday mail delivery) that's going to have to change or the government is going to have to step in financially.

Today I learned that old people and poor people don't use snail mail. Thanks for the lesson.

Reading fail. The (obvious) point the OP was making is that the vast majority of snailmail is catalogs and other junk mail, all of which is carried at a far cheaper per-item rate than first-class letters. Hence your "old..and poor people" are subsidizing the corporations.

They receive a lot of discounts because they do the USPS's work for them. They only receive discounts if the mail is all pre-sorted, bagged and tagged with endpoint route destinations, so the USPS can easily deliver the mail as a bunch to the individual local (and even individual carrier route) without inspecting any of it. It's cheaper because they are using much less of the actual service. And a significant amount of work goes into managing the pre-sorting, barcoding and permit management.

"Reading fail. The (obvious) point the OP was making is that the vast majority of snailmail is catalogs and other junk mail,"

Thinking fail. You haven't ever received a mail in rebate, an ebay package, a small business online order, a care package from grandma, letters from the bank, local catalogues from small businesses, cheques from contract work, reminders about doctor visits, city forms, etc.. recently?

And besides all that, do you really think that the destruction of a carrier will stop or decrease the levels of spam? HA! all that money there, UPS and fedex would be more than happy to enter that market. I doubt you would see even a one day drop in spam volumes. Someone like UPS would buy up the usps business and then charge the average person $7 to send a letter. The volume discounts would likely not change and you would be at the same place you started, except on the rare occasion when you do need to use the service and then you would personally pay a lot more.

Its hard for me to believe that the federal government doesnt own the post office as a government service. Its one of those businesses that should not be run as "for profit". They are providing a service at a low cost to everyone in your country and should be protected.

Nice try there sparky, but here's a fun arithmetic fact. 10000 items at 5 cents per item is vastly MORE MONEY than 1 grandmas letter at 2 dollars or whatever. Obviously the advertising industry drives the post office's revenue. You can argue that this is wasteful, environmentally unfriendly and therefor the federal government should really probably pay for the post office to prevent these sorts of spamvalanches, but you are not doing that. You seem to be saying that snail mail is obsolete, which i think is demonstrably false. There is quite a high premium to send things by fedex or ups, thus creating a good niche for USPS, albiet evidently not a profitable one. Should near universal access to a communication tool be profitable? thats the question.

Should near universal access to a communication tool be profitable? thats the question.

The Aussie mail service is still cheap, fast and reliable, it makes a profit and is competitively priced against private couriers such as FedEx. It's main business is letters and parcels, as with any other courier company it's insanely expensive to deliver spam via Australia Post. Go back a couple of decades and the US postal service used to be just as efficient and profitable. A $17B loss in a single year indicates to me that the US congress has not been doing it's job properly, unless of course its job is to dismantle the postal service and eliminate what used to be a major competitor to FedEx? Why do I blame congress? - Because (as I understand it) they set the prices on EVERYTHING the USPS sells. Metaphorically USPS management has been tied up with red tape and throw in the pool, congress and the big boys of the courier industry have been laughing their arses off watching them try to swim for at least a decade.

If all the retail stores are going broke because everyone is buying stuff off the internet, then USPS should be doing a roaring trade in package deliveries.
Not sure why USPS don't seem to be able to leverage off all that traffic to make a profit.

First, because USPS is not supposed to make a profit (it supposed to target operating at break even.)
But, more importantly, because, while the USPS has a legal monopoly on regular mail delivery, it doesn't on package delivery, so private carriers that don't do regular mail delivery but are optimized for package and express delivery take a lot of that business.
In some other countries, when new communications mechanism -- starting with the telegraph, then the telephone, then the internet -- began displacing mail, the public entity that was the national postal system expanded to also include those functions and take a similar role with relating to them that it took with regard to mail. In the US, instead, the postal service has been kept to a narrow role, and its role that is less relevant over time to how the country operates. It is failing by design, even before considering knife thrusts to the heart like the Congressionally-imposed 75-year retirement funding mandate.

Not quite. If all the retail stores are going broke because everyone is buying stuff off the internet, then USPS should be doing a roaring trade in package deliveries.

Not sure why USPS don't seem to be able to leverage off all that traffic to make a profit.

They are making tons through parcel deliveries. The problem is, congress prevents them from adapting.

USPS is required to be revenue neutral and non-profit (i.e., they make as much money as they need). Congress controls how much a stamp costs (and other basic services - so their income is hobbled), and congress controls how much they're required to pay out (e.g., USPS is required to pre-pay retirement for 75 years over the next 10. Yes, that means they're paying NOW for a retirement package for employees who have not even been hired yet).

In fact, because of changes signed in by George Bush (notably, USPS was running a pretty damn tight ship until 2006 when the requirement mandate kicked in.).

Basically, the government has set up USPS to fail as an example of "government inefficiency" by making it have obligations that go above and beyond what any company has to provide, including USPS' competitors.

Then again, I suppose it's better paying $8 to have FedEx send a letter across the US than 50 cents.

even using the highest estimate of F-22 cost I could find we'd need to give them 44 F-22s. Raise rates on mass mailers perhaps? The only reason I check my mail anymore is to get information the government wants me to know about, car registration, voter registration, jury duty etc. If I could give an email address to uncle sam, I would be more than happy to do away with my mail address. Let it die.

Sadly, they would not. Besides the retirement account issue, one of the restrictions the USPS runs under is they are not permitted to compete in the more lucrative areas because that would be 'unfair to the free market'. So they are essentially forced to both be self sufficient AND only offer services with thin or negative margins.

THIS. Congress tinkers with the mandate of the USPS, and then complains that its not making a profit. Don't you get it? It's not allowed to compete in ways that allow it to make a profit.

Pretty much all the people around at the founding of the nation recognized the value of reliable, efficient, post service available for all. It's essential infrastructure. It's one of the reasons why business works in America. 'Based on the Postal Clause in Article One of the United States Constitution, empowering Congress "To establish post offices and post roads", it became the Post Office Department (USPOD) in 1792. ' - Wikipedia

Geez, try sending essential items to your buddy on Peace Corps assignment in Africa, and you will quickly come to understand the value of a trustworthy, efficient and transparent postal service.

And you can't just eliminate the USPS with a wave of your hand. Just figuring out how to do that would be a tremendous amount of work. Many laws and much legal precedent rely on the existence of the USPO, for instance. And still, weirdly, there are lots of things that cannot be sent over a wire.

USPS provides a great value -- just think about it, for about half a dollar you can get your first class letter delivered almost anywhere in the U.S. Alas, they are burdened with costs that other enterprises don't share, and their very existence seems to be against the flow so to speak. I think it's time to abolish the U.S. Mail monopoly and let it compete on a fair playing ground. If you didn't know, U.S. Mail has a legally granted monopoly. It's illegal for anyone but a postman to drop mail into postboxes marked U.S. Mail, and if your postbox is not marked, then the postman is obligated not to deliver mail in it. When U.S. Postal Service (however they were called back then) was starting up, they did actually have competition, and that competition was providing better service, apparently. The competitor got killed when USPS got granted the monopoly. I think we should see a return of healthy competition once the USPS monopoly ends. There's no reason for it.

If you're in a remote area, maybe you'd just have to accept mail service that only came by once a week, and maybe only to centralised postal locations.And maybe you'd also have to accept that anyone who wanted to send you mail might have to pay a bit more for it.

For other areas, why are they proposing dropping Saturday delivery. That means 2 days without mail. Why not drop Wednesday?

Perhaps you could subscribe to a service where a completely automated system could open the original mail, scan it, and allow you to accept an electronic copy instead, for a credit. If you still wanted/needed it delivered, it could reseal it.That might admittedly be complex to implement in a private fashion, but, I suspect people even in non-rural areas might be excited to have scans instead, so it might pay for itself.

Dunno. Maybe some areas will never be profitable for non-electronic delivery of cheap (say, $1) mail. People living in those areas might just have to accept that paying more for physical delivery of mail is a side effect of living there.

In this case though, the main reason the Postal Service is running out of money is their retirement plan.

the USPS is part of the essential infrastructure our country, our civilization we know it even, relies on to exist.

imagine if UPS or fedex or both went out of business. the why of it doesnt matter, just imagine they did. important/essential communication that we rely on no longer flows through them. now also imagine that someone had the bright idea, lets ditch the USPS....oops. Now instead of having something that garunteed communication across the country, even if industry failed (and there were private couriers that operated alongside usps before ups), there's nothing. sure someone would step into the gap eventually. but after how long?

businesses grow, they merge, they split, they buy each other out....its the life cycle of business. it happens. and sometimes those businesses make bad decisions and die. Look at Hostess and the coming twinkie shortage.

when those businesses are part of the essential infrastructure of the nation, when we have become dependent upon them, and they die....its never good. Its happened before. It will happen again. Killing the USPS is not a good idea.

If it had been up to private industry nearly a third of the nation still wouldnt have phone lines.If it had been up to private industry, many small towns wouldnt even have paved roads. (and those debates still happen, where residents of big cities say "why should we pay a tax to help build a road thru a town of 20 people?")

If it had been up to private industry, the last 5% of the population still wouldnt have internet access.....oops. That one is still true.

a republican clutches the constitution and screams bloody murder, kindly ask them to stop wiping their jackboots on it. The postal service is in the constitution as well. Lets go back to bush junior, or as i like to call him, the acid reflux republicans just cant keep down:

H.R. 6407; The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act was passed in the Republican-controlled Senate two days after it was introduced in the Republican-controlled House. It was subsequently signed into law by Republican George W. Bush. One of the provisions in this hastily passed law requires the USPS to prefund ALL of it's retirees health benefits 75 years into the future. That's right. The USPS is supposed to set aside money for the future health benefits for people that haven't even been born yet.

THANK YOU! I wish more people knew that Congress decided to make demands on the USPS that no company could ever meet. And to think that the Republicans frequently politic on "running the government like a business" yet they make actions to ensure the government business fails.

This is because they believe "The government can't do anything right". When they get elected they make sure that statement is true. Why anyone would want to elect someone who believes this I cannot understand. It would be like going to an interview and telling them that you can't do the job and their business will soon fail.

I strongly suspect the reason for that is because the Republicans don't like the idea of

1) some part of the government actually working, because it puts the lie to their ideology, and2) some part of the government competing with the private sector, to wit UPS, FedEx, etc, even when those carriers aren't that interested in first-class mail.

So you think that because a certain political party doesn't like the idea of large government services, that they would actually sabotage existing government services in order to prove a point in an argument that no one outside of the beltway cares about?

Without the US Postal Service, the US House of Representatives wouldn't have anything to do. All they do now is have unanimous consent votes on naming the post offices.

Yep, they knew this would happen too. Why would you (as a Republican) want to bankrupt any government controlled entity? Answer, to make way for a commercial service that would do the exact same thing.

The ridiculous retiree benefits mandate handed down from congress is pretty much the sole reason for this unnecessary debacle.

No other organization is required to provide such an absurd level of retiree benefits payment so why is this insanity allowed to persist in light of the fact it could potentially doom the USPS?

The whole point of the insane prefunding mandate (what is ridiculous isn't the retiree benefits, it is the mandate to prefund them 75 years into the future) is to doom the USPS. Its not allowed to persist in spite of the fact it could doom the USPS, it is allowed to persist because it will doom the USPS.

What makes that ironic is that from seeing maps of state presidential election results; the GOP votes seem to dominate areas that a private enterprise performing mail carriage wouldn't go near because they'd be unprofitable.

The health plan mentioned in the blurb is what did this, not the Internet. The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act forces USPS to put 75 years of healthcare benefits into an account within 10 years, something which was noted as ridiculous when the law passed. Also, this law is filled with provisions that say the USPS is *not* allowed to modernize in this era of the Internet. The law was pushed by lobbyists from companies like UPS and FedEx. It makes no sense to blame this on the Internet, since the direct cause of this massive shortfall was the 2006 law which caused the shortfall, a law which also prevents the USPS from modernizing. A postal service is one of the few "socialist" government nationalized enterprises mandated by the U.S. constitution, the Republicans and private mail carriers are doing all of this to try to do an end run around the constitution they supposedly love so much.

1. Cut delivery in most areas, definitely the rural ones to every other day. M-W-F and T-Th-Sa. This will cut number of mail carriers and fuel and vehicles needed, as 1 carrier now will get two routes. Express mail has it's own carrier so that will be unaffected for the people that pay for it.

2. Offer to take UPS and FedEx packages at the post office. People who want package for stuff they don't want delivered at home (theft, gifts, adult purchases, etc) have to rent a box at UPS or Fedex location at exorbinant rates. Let them rent a cheaper USPS box, get their mail and packages in one spot, come in, and bring some more business.

3. Consider offering an electronic mail service, where you can send certified/registered mail or even purchase money orders and send them right off online - and have USPS print them out and deliver them like normal letters. Premium services without ever going to the counter. Lawyer offices rejoice?

4. Call an international Postal Office congress. Get a cheap international tracking number and while at it, standardize all customs forms and registered form and other forms the world over with symbols. Too many packages get lost, too many registered packages with funny foreign postal languages go unheeded and the cheapest tracking number (unreliable) is with Express mail or Fedex/UPS with around $150 minimum ridiculousness, less for a business but still). Domestic tracking is like 0.75 cents. Even if they charge $5 for intl tracking, would be way cheaper than what's out there now and an untapped market. Especially for eBay sellers and the like.

5. On the eBay sellers front, try to break down customs barriers, especially with the EU. It's ridiculous.

4. Call an international Postal Office congress. Get a cheap international tracking number and while at it, standardize all customs forms and registered form and other forms the world over with symbols. Too many packages get lost, too many registered packages with funny foreign postal languages go unheeded and the cheapest tracking number (unreliable) is with Express mail or Fedex/UPS with around $150 minimum ridiculousness, less for a business but still). Domestic tracking is like 0.75 cents. Even if they charge $5 for intl tracking, would be way cheaper than what's out there now and an untapped market. Especially for eBay sellers and the like.

I think all that exists. The language for post is French, the tracking numbers I've seen have started with an ISO country code (and foreign ones worked in my national postal service's website).

5. On the eBay sellers front, try to break down customs barriers, especially with the EU. It's ridiculous.

1. Be more proactive with the blue boxes. I have to literally drive 3 miles out of my way to get to the closest ones in my well to do suburb town. None of the major new shopping malls have one. And looking at the internet there is a huge pocket of none although demographically it makes no sense. The closest one is in a aging, dying stripmall in front of an empty supermarket that closed 5 years ago. In the last 10 years, 5 huge strip malls opened in the area, each one bigger than the last, and literally none have one. The only other two in the area are like 1/2 mile from the USPO itself, located 20 feet from each other diagonally on street corners not particurly trafficked. A braindead person much have coordinated this.

2. Have more self serve kiosks, particularly in locations that should close but the unions block it. (No clue how to overcome that.)

Financial problems are not unique to the US postal service. The same kinds of issues are affecting mail carriers the world over. That said, our situation is particularly absurd. Keep in mind that this is the same entity that decided to eliminate clocks from post offices so that customers in line wouldn't have as clear a sense of how long they had been waiting. And they've got a tracking system that is complete and utter garbage. The service I've experienced from postal services overseas is better than what I get here.

There are two fundamental problems here: the first is the complete and utter chaos of a government run entity, although private corporations aren't necessarily any better, and second, the insane burden of employee entitlement programs. You've got these excessively generous pensions that should have never been offered to begin with and guaranteed pay raises. Why should government workers be entitled to these pensions? Don't they have social security, investments and personal savings like the rest of us?

It's tough to run what is a legacy business in decline when you can't change your service to suit the new environment due to the law. Case in point: Saturday delivery. It's just not necessary anymore and is hugely expensive, but they can't eliminate it without Congress getting involved.

That's no way to run an agency. Congress should remove all these restrictions and let the USPS modernize.

As much as I agree with the problems congress saddled on the post office, it doesn't need to me repeated 20 times in the same comment section and modded to +5 insightful every time. Repeating something louder and more often only serves to irritate, people who didnt get it the first or second time have their head in the sand anyway.

All criticisms aside, it seems to me that the immediate problem can be addressed with a price adjustment on retail services. This PDF [usps.com] provides some interesting rough figures to play around with on page 4. I am specifically looking at the first figure ($66B in revenue), the second figure (167.9B "pieces of mail" delivered), and comparing with the reported $15.9B loss. Adding $66B revenue (all spent cash) plus the additional $15.9B loss gives us a total of $81.9B operational expenses.

Now divide $66B in revenue by 167.9B pieces of mail delivered and we get an average revenue of about $0.39 per piece of mail delivered - that is less than the current price of a "forever" stamp which is $0.45. That means that some amount of mail is being handled for less than $0.45 which is averaging down the revenue per piece of mail by almost 14%. If we divide our total operational cost of $81.9B by167.9B pieces of mail, we get about $0.49 actual average cost per piece of mail. If we correct for the 14% averaging down, that brings us up to $0.56 per piece of mail.

So I propose raising the base price of the forever stamps from $0.45 to $0.56 and proportionately for other lesser cost mail as well (e.g.post cards, flyers, etc.) Is 11 cents really all that much to ask? This doesn't seem like that big of a problem to me. Furthermore, I think this spoiled new generation of citizens has become so accustomed to their daily conveniences that it takes a hurricane Sandy to remind them of the value of a payphone. Will it take a collapsed postal system to realize the value of mail delivery? How much would it cost you to deliver the same piece of mail via an alternative commercial carrier? (hint: a lot more) How much would it cost you to personally deliver it and use none of them? (hint: unbearably more)

1. Stop requiring the post office to fund pensions for future employees that aren't even born yet.

In 2006, Congress passed a law requiring the Postal Service to wholly pre-fund its retirement health package – that is, cover the health care costs of future retirees, in advance, at 100%. The Postal Service, which is a corporation owned but not funded by the federal government, is the only government-related agency required to prefund retirees' health benefits.

"(The requirement is) so ridiculous, Congress doesn't do it. No other government agency does it. No private businesses do it," she said. "It's $5.5 billion a year, every year, for 10 years. That's what is causing the problem.

"The law was passed in 2006 and lo and behold, ever since 2007, the Postal Service has been suffering a tremendous debt."

The pre-funded pension is only one part of the problem (also, accounting does not work as simply as you seem to think). The problem is threefold (at least):

1. The pension mandate (from Congress), as already mentioned;2. The USPS is forced by Congress to run unprofitable postal offices and routes;3. The USPS cannot set its own rates (they are set by, surprise surprise, Congress).

Either the USPS is a public service, in which case it should be reintegrated into the government and divorced of the need to make a profit, or else it is a business and it should be able to set its own rates and terms for doing so.

You cannot have it both ways and get everything you want, which is exactly what Congress has done to them.

I wasn't able to easily locate a history on when the USPS funding was separated from the general budget, if indeed it was ever a direct part of it. Would love to see the history of that decision.

The United States Postal Office was created by the Second Continental Congress in 1775, became, the US Post Office Department in 1792, and remained a cabinet-level government department until 1971, when the Postal Reorganization Act moved it out of the regular structure of government into a government-directed corporation.

It'd be better to just sub contract the postal service out to UPS and FedEx at that point. ZOMG privatizing the postal service!
If they cut delivery dates, that limits my options and makes me even less likely to use them, especially if I need timely delivery of something like say a rent check or a bill payment (believe it or not, there are landlords and rental companies, as well as utilities and such that still only accept payment in person or a check in the mail as opposed to paying online)
If they raise rates, that makes them less competitive with their private industry counterparts.
If they were to do both, private industry would eat their lunch.

You're a fucking nincompoop. USPS has been gutted by corrupt politicians who have been paid off by private interests.

The entire "public is less efficient than private" lie that had been repeated so often that everyone now believes it is just that. A lie. The reality is that private industry is far more efficient at corrupting and side stepping morality issues in the quest for a dollar. That *seems* like it's more efficient at first glance, but it actually incurs a giant negative externality that is not accounted for.

Now think very carefully before you reply with some hilariously stupid straw man argument.

If they cut delivery dates, that limits my options and makes me even less likely to use them, especially if I need timely delivery of something like say a rent check or a bill payment (believe it or not, there are landlords and rental companies, as well as utilities and such that still only accept payment in person or a check in the mail as opposed to paying online).

You're free to spend $13 to FedEx your rent check right now(get your quote here [fedex.com] - I picked slowest/cheapest option to send an envelope across town). By what factor would first class postage rates need to increase to be "uncompetitive" with that?

While your notion of privatizing postal service seems expedient, it ignores practicality. FedEx and UPS do not operate on the same model as the postal service. They deliver only to locations and they sometimes receive shipments at a location. The Postal Service must send carriers to on routes for every single mailbox in case there is mail to be picked up. Neither FedEx nor UPS want this job.

I thought it was Congress that mandated that they prepay it all for the life of an employee when hired.

The "crisis" is entirely manufactured by Congress. Yes, Congress. They (and by "they," I mean mostly Republicans who seem to want to drive the post office into bankruptcy) required that the Post Office prepay pensions to the extent that no other business is required to do.

The "crisis" is entirely manufactured by Congress. Yes, Congress. They (and by "they," I mean mostly Republicans who seem to want to drive the post office into bankruptcy) required that the Post Office prepay pensions to the extent that no other business is required to do.

This is exactly their modus operandi for pretty much every government agency these days. Cut funding where possible, demand crazy requirements on spending, saving, oversight, personnel, etc., and then when a cash-strapped agency burdened with the bureaucracy necessary to follow those requirements and things like pre-paying pensions 75 years in advance fails to perform, decry the inefficiency and waste of the government and demand that the function the agency performs be privatized.

You seem to forget that most municipalities (and much of the Federal government) has huge pension shortfalls. Why? Because the gov't agency involved does have a pay-as-you go system. Pension funds are not funded until they are being withdrawn. That is one of the reasons we are in such a f**king mess.

Say an employee is to get a salary (s) and pension (p). Every pay period the government agency should pay salary and place the appropriate pension payment into an account. We are not funding our pensions.

I haven't read the link you provided - there may have been excess in those bills - but before laughing and ridiculing them out of hand maybe you should reserve a little frustration for the agencies that do not pay pensions and expect later generations to fund them.

Well said. And I noticed there are quite a few people here saying that the employees shouldn't get pensions at all. It's as if they don't understand that a pension is deferred compensation--it's money you earned while working but your employer promised to pay it to you later. It's not a "freebie" that workers unfairly feel entitled to. It is part of their compensation package.

If an organization defaults on their pension obligations, they've essentially reneged on earnings the employees are fully entitled to.

Now, the requirement the new hires at USPS have their pensions 100% funded from day one may be (and probably is) excessive and unnecessary. But any organization that offers deferred compensation pensions absolutely needs to make sure they are funded so that the money is there to be paid out when employees retire.

How America survives to this day with people this fucking stupid going out to vote, just astounds me.

You fucking idiot: A pension just is an employer-run plan WHERE YOU PUT ASIDE A PORTION OF YOUR EARNINGS INTO RETIREMENTS SAVINGS. THAT'S WHAT A PENSION IS!

Your salary isn't the entirety of your compensation, it's your salary plus benefits, which partly means pension. For decades employers have been offering (and unions accepting) lower salaries plus guaranteed pension benefits. You didn't have to save out of your salary because it's structured into your employment--they withhold part of your money, invest it, and pay it out later to you. Besides the benefits of large pension fund investing rather than a single small investor, you get professionals managing your retirement money, not some coal miner or factory worker who doesn't understand investing.

It's at the point now where I'd tell my kids "never accept a pension deal because someone dickhead down the road is going to blame you for budget problems and steal it back. Demand your money up front."

I think the argument is that the contractor will then organize and do the work and use the supplies in a more efficient manner. Of course what ends up happening is he cuts corners and uses substandard supplies.

It can be cheaper! See the painting contractor actually bought paint sprayers instead of using an old fashioned brush. Of course it's not going to be cheaper if all you do is paint one house, but it allows the contractor to use 1/4th the man hours in actually doing the paint work. He can pass on these savings through lower costs than if you did it yourself.

Now it doesn't always work out that way, but it can, and sometimes does. Outsourcing/contracting isn't always the correct answer, but sometimes it really is.

Maybe. But I think it's days are numbered. At some point it will be cheaper to institutionalize and standardize secure 2D document transmission mechanisms and leave physical object delivery to the private shipping companies. Even today people can have internet access pretty much anywhere in the USA, via dialup. Some people don't have computers, but they can go to a local library to read their mail (and post offices could even be converted into digital mail reading centers cheaper than their continuing delivery services). I think it's inevitable, just a question of when.